May 13, 2009

In February, 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell experienced the little understood phenomenon sometimes called the “Overview Effect”. He describes being completely engulfed by a profound sense of universal connectedness. Without warning, he says, a feeing of bliss, timelessness, and connectedness began to overwhelm him. He describes becoming instantly and profoundly aware that each of his constituent atoms were connected to the fragile planet he saw in the window and to every other atom in the Universe. He described experiencing an intense awareness that Earth, with its humans, other animal species, and systems were all one synergistic whole. He says the feeling that rushed over him was a sense of interconnected euphoria. He was not the first—nor the last—to experience this strange “cosmic connection”.

Rusty Schweikart experienced it on March 6th 1969 during a spacewalk
outside his Apollo 9 vehicle: “When you go around the Earth in an hour
and a half, you begin to recognize that your identity is with that
whole thing. That makes a change…it comes through to you so powerfully
that you’re the sensing element for Man.” Schweikart, similar to what
Mitchell experienced, describes intuitively sensing that everything is
profoundly connected.

Their experiences, along with dozens of other similar experiences
described by other astronauts, intrigue scientists who study the brain.
This “Overview Effect”, or acute awareness of all matter as
synergistically connected, sounds somewhat similar to certain religious
experiences described by Buddhist monks, for example. Where does it
come from and why?

Andy Newberg, a neuroscientist/physician with a background in spacemedicine, is learning how to identify the markers of someone who hasexperienced space travel. He says there is a palpable difference in someone who has been in space, and he wants to know why. Newbergspecializes in finding the neurological markers of brains in states of altered consciousness: Praying nuns, transcendental mediators, and others in focused or "transcendent" states.

Newberg can actually pinpoint regions in subjects' gray matter that correlate to these circumstances, and now he plans to use his expertise to find how and why the Overview Effect occurs. He is setting up advanced neurological scanning instruments that can head into space to study--live--the brain functions of space travelers. If this Overview Effect is a real, physiological phenomenon—he wants to watch it unfold.

Newberg's first test subject will not be an astronaut, but rather a civilian. Reda Andersen will be leaving the planet with Rocketplane Kistler. She says, that as one of the world's first civilian space adventurers, she is more than happy to let Andy scan her brain if it can help unlock the mystery. Why do astronauts all seem to experience a profound alteration of their perceptions when entering space, and will it happen for Rita and the other civilian explorers as well?

After decades of study and contemplation about his experience, Ed
Mitchell believes that the feeling of “oneness” with the Universe that
he and others have experienced is a consequence of little understood
quantum physics.

In a recent interview with writer Diana deRegnier of American
Chronicle, Mitchell explains how the event changed his life and his
entire perspective on the world and how each of us fits into the grand
scale of the cosmos.

“Four hundred years ago. the philosopher Rene Descartes came to the
conclusion that physicality, spirituality, mind and body belonged to
different realms of reality that didn't interact. Now, that served the
purpose to get the Inquisition off the backs of the intellectuals so
they could disagree on material things with the church and without the
fear of being burned at the stake. So that ended that, but it did
cause, for four hundred years, science to consider consciousness and
mind a subject for philosophy and religion and not a subject for
science.

Now, one of the things that happened, in the 1940s, was the
mathematician, physicist, Norbert Wiener (MIT, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology) for the first time really defined information as the
negative of entropy, and entropy as the idea of the universe is running
down and wastes energy. But, Wiener defined information as the negative
of entropy, and that's wonderful but it didn't go far enough.”

Mitchell says that in an attempt to fill in some of the missing gap,
the 2008 revised edition of his book The Way of the Explorer explores
the largely ignored science of human consciousness. Using what he calls
the “dyadic model” he outlines the “two faces” of energy. “Instead of
being two separate things, it's the energy as the basis of our
existence in matter. And, it’s the basis of our knowing and
information,” Mitchell explains.

“We had not had, in science, a definition of consciousness. The only
definition of consciousness from the dictionary is that at its basic
level it is awareness. Consciousness means to be aware, and then we
have different levels of consciousness depending upon how complex the
substance is. It has been demonstrated many times over in laboratories
that basic awareness is demonstrable at the level of plants, at simple
bacteria, at simple life forms.

This is done with Faraday cages. It's shown that this information at
this deep level, at the quantum level, can transcend electromagnetic
theory. And, now we're getting into quantum physics and we don´t want
to go there at this point. But it's a very fundamental notion that
awareness is at the very basis of things.”

Mitchell believes that perhaps both the theologians and scientists have missed the mark.

“All I can suggest to the mystic and the theologian is that our gods
have been too small; they fill the universe. And to the scientist all I
can say is that the gods do exist; they are the eternal, connected, and
aware Self experienced by all intelligent beings.'

In response to DeRegnier questioning whether or not Mitchell believes
in the idea of God, he responds that while he does not believe in the
traditional “grandfather figure” version of God, “we do have great
mystery about what is the origin of the universe, how it came to be.
There's a great deal of question as to whether the big bang is the
correct answer to the way the universe arose, and under what auspices
and conditions. I don't think we have the full answers to that yet.
Hopefully in due course we'll be able to find a much better way to
describe all this.”

But while Mitchell does not claim to know how to perfectly interpret
his experience, he is certain that it was a glimpse into a largely
ignored reality: People, places and things are all more closely
connected than they sometimes appear. He also mentions the need for
better stewardship of our precious planet.

“The great thinker Buckminster Fuller, philosopher, now deceased but
for a goodly portion of the twentieth century, pointed out at the
beginning of our space exploration that we are the crew of ‘space ship
earth’. But we 're a crew of mutiny and how can you run a space ship
with a mutinous crew?”

Interesting. I had very similar experiences several times when i was about 5-6 years old. All of a sudden, you felt like you can "think/see" everything in the world, and it made you very happy and you wanted to hug the entire universe.
Hasn't happened to me since that age, im 30 now.. But i vividly remember those experiences, and if i were religious, i would say it was some sort of revelation/divine connection.

Hah, this is very interesting. But I'm appalled as to why they're getting into "the mystic and the theologian" as Mitchell put it. And you're thirty now, correct? Then how would you recall these events if it was about 25-24 years ago? At any rate this is quite interesting.

I remember having a similar experience during my time at high school. I was walking to school and the effect only lasted a split second. I saw the world and everything outside of the Earth as connected, time did not exist and things just "were". Still gives me goosebumps when I think about it :)

Hmmm this is interesting... There may also be a correlation to that of a kind of 'escalation of perception' by comparing the brain activity areas of someone who's flown in a plane, viewing the earth and fundamentally changing perceptions of the world and someone who hasn't.. There is a clear difference when you actually talk with someone who doesn't or has never flown..
It could also be influencedstructurally by the lack of gravity and the change in the interconnection patterns which normally occur in a 1 gravity environment..

Travelling in outher space has trough all time changed the human brain.

Firstly: We already and really ARE travelling in "outher space" every day on the Earth. (OK, this fact does seemingly not change the modern human being a lot)

Secondly: Our ancestors travelled frequently in space via out-of-body-journeys, and I´m sure these journeys affected the human way of viewing everything - and doing this in a very holistic way of understanding Cosmos.

This article started off decent enough but took a hard right into New Age dribble with the philosophy of Edgar Mitchell. He's no scientist, just a space pilot yet the author decides to publish his ramblings. How about he waits for some decent results from an actual scientific study before he starts pulling theories about "quantum gods" out of thin air. "Overview Effect" sounds very fascinating, but nothing Mitchell said was interesting except when he was describing the shared "overview effect".

The overview effect is in essence not a neurological mishap or strange occurance- just think about it- truly imagine the magnanimity of floating above Earth or walking on another planet thousands of miles from the only rock we've ever known- the only place we've grown up on, experienced, learned about, wondered at...and now, you can see all that at a distance so far away (say if your on the moon's surface) that you could hold your hand up and optically "have the whole world in your hand"
Its euphoria-if you want a neurological reason-ENDORPHINS! And Mitchell makes the main point: Consciousness- its our knowing..." We all do it- we get sucked into the mendane routine of life that when you finally stop and take a look around, a bit of a feeling of wonder and awe overcomes you when you fathom the beauties in our everday world that we usually ignore due to our "more important things". In space, there isnt much distraction from the beauty, therefore the amazing experience is fully embraced- call it Overview Effect- try to pinpoint where and what's going on in the brain if you want- but it comes down to basic amazement, of which is magnified when you understand the history of our universe and our world and how we came to be- which astronauts obviously have all learned and understand.
Also, I would be surprised if Reda Andersen experiences Overview Effect on a plane ride that just takes you above the atomosphere- NOT out of this planet- rocketplane kistler will just bring her high enough to experience free fall aka "weightlessness" but she wont be leaving this planet, she'll see the curvature of the Earth in line with her- I doubt she'll be up there long enough to feel the Effect. Also, it depends on how much she knows about the universe and its history- it makes for a complete understanding when you can grasp and understand the whole picture (or what we know about it today) and how it all came to be. Well, to a degree. So long as she truly appreciates the beauty and understands how little we all are, how blessed we are, and how what we do on Earth can have tremendous effects to/on the planet, while barely leaving a smudge on the universe as a whole.

- Listen, guys, that picture is from the movie Sunshine. I'm telling you ... it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_dNGQ2rK3w

- I don't know if this volunteer is going to experience it or not--it'll be interesting to see if she does. I wonder if you need to be in space for a while to experience it or if the Overview Effect can occur in suborbital flight.

My theory is that it has something to do with the pineal gland, endogenous DMT, and a very unique setting.

Seeing the earth from that vantage or the sensation of floating in space could be very intense and cross the security threshold on your pineal gland. This will cause the pineal gland to dose yourself with a pure form of DMT "dimethyltryptamine" which will give a very vivid concept of oneness and universal truth.

Honestly i had an experience that hit so close to home i kinda had to take a double look to make sure i was readin it right. I just dubbed it a moment of clarity where it felt like i was above all the worlds small problems and saw what life was really intended to be. Now given i did take a shroom, but just because it was a so called drug or hallucinagen doesn't mean it should be shrugged off because to our understanding it could just be a simple a drug or w/e, but in reality it could be a way of freeing/opening your mind from the rules and restricitons you have been born to believe. Just a thought i had about the subject i wanted to share, nothing more,nothing less.

But i will say that moment i had put everything in life into a perspective that was clear to me.